Mrs. Wilson had removed a small map from her purse at some point and now directed the car off the interstate and then down one street and another, the Pontiac’s great pale blue hood jutting out ahead of us like a diving board. I still did not even know if we were looking for a business or a private home, so when she at last told me to pull the car to the curb I was not sure if we had reached our destination or if she was only pausing to gather her bearings, until she told me to shut off the ignition. She turned the mirror toward her own face and spent a moment looking herself over before asking me first for the car keys (which she slipped into her handbag) and then if I would come with her.

She did not wait for my answer, and yet a moment later I stood beside her on the sidewalk, staring at the house in front of which I had parked the Pontiac. It was utterly unremarkable, yellow, with a small white porch in the front framed by thick, square pillars, a house in a style still known as a California bungalow. I did not know Mrs. Wilson well at that time—I have come to the conclusion in the years since that no one really knew Mrs. Wilson particularly well—but even a complete stranger would have sensed her distress in that moment, the way in which she seemed to gather herself, to untangle herself, waiting there on the street outside that house until I finally asked her if she needed some assistance.

But then I saw her, the woman who had captured Mrs. ­Wilson’s attention so completely, a woman who stood on the porch of that yellow bungalow, her face and shoulders yet in shadows so that I could not make out her features. Mrs. ­Wilson did not answer me and did not move until my hand came up, tentatively, to her elbow, grasping it gently, feeling the thin bones of her arm beneath my grip. Only then did she step forward at last, moving toward the house, the figure there continuing to watch us approach without movement or comment until she, Mrs. Wilson, finally stopped at the base of the concrete steps that led to the house’s landing.

“Kim?” she said. “Do you remember me?”

The woman there looked down at us, her face—I saw now that she was Asian, not Vietnamese but certainly Asian—betraying nothing, no sign of recognition or even of acknowledgment.

“I guess you’re wondering why I’m here,” Mrs. Wilson said then.

“Who’s that?” the woman on the porch said.

Mrs. Wilson looked at me and by the expression upon her face I knew that she was momentarily surprised to find me there. “Oh,” she said, “this is my cousin’s son. John. He drove me.”

“Hello,” I said lamely.